Once upon a time, this site made a name for heartfelt articles that resonated with people. Starting in early 2016, it caught the wave of joy that was the National League season, with more magic moments than the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Over the years, we’ve evolved into news, opinion and history, but at the core, we are a site developed by a fan, written by fans, for fans. That’s why tomorrow, we won’t be impartial, balanced or look for the cloud within the silver lining. We’ll be on edge, nervous and, hopefully, in tears by 5 pm.

Tomorrow, Lincoln City could be promoted to the Championship automatically. History could be made. I’m writing this at 5:29 pm, so in 24 hours, we will know.

Deep down, we believe it’s happening, be it tomorrow, Monday or a week on Saturday. It’s almost like waiting for the postman to deliver something cool you’ve ordered online. You’re 99% sure that it’s coming, but you just have to wait, and you don’t quite know when.

What is football?

What is football (uh-oh, philosophical moment coming up)? Sure, it’s a sport, but what does it mean? Are we all just invested in the science of football, its innate beauty and spectacle? No, because if we were, we’d probably not have devoted our lives to a club that spent 32 out of 33 years in the basement division, or below, prior to our League One return. We’d probably not have bought a season ticket to watch us drawing 0-0 with Cambridge and Charlton, having one shot on goal each.

No, football is about more. I always say it is about belonging, about a shared purpose, but not everyone goes to a game and speaks to people they don’t know. Sure, sitting in the stands, having 2,000 (my first game) and 10,000 (tomorrow) around you all (almost all) wanting the same thing can be enough. Sometimes, that bond is the hardest to cement, and the most heated arguments I’ve had have been with people wearing the same colours as me.

Football is about more. It’s about purpose. Regular readers may know I’ve drifted in life at times, between leaving school and turning 35, with no real solid career or goal. I didn’t stand for anything, I didn’t achieve a whole lot, but once or twice a week, I knew where I had to be. It’s like a religion without one single God. It’s routine, it’s structure, it’s an identity. Whether working a dead-end job, a stressful sales job, or no job at all, Saturday afternoon was spent at the Bank. Whatever you go through, supporting your club gives you something undefinable that only we know. If you don’t follow a team, if you don’t commit to supporting one set of 11 players over another because of family, location, or some other reason, and then defend that set of 11 players, be proud of them like they’re you, you’ll never know.

You’ll never know.

I was once involved in an argument with a non-football fan because I refer to Lincoln as ‘we’ as if I were on the field. If we lose, it stings, and that’s odd. You take this organisation, this team that evolves and changes, and make it part of you. Once it is a part of you, it never goes. The players, staff, kits, grounds and fortunes change, but you don’t. You live the successes and failures as if they’re yours, when all you can do is watch and hope.

For the last ten years, we’ve had a lot of the latter, whereas for the first 33 years of my Imps’ supporting career, we had little. Hope. We’ve had these games before, the ones where something serious could happen. They end in heartbreak at times (Portsmouth, 2023; Bournemouth, 2003) and on other days, they end in the sort of joy normally only experienced when you get married or have kids. Macclesfield, 2017. Wycombe, 1988.

Wimbledon, 2026?

Each moment has a nuance that twists it into uniqueness. Macclesfield 2017 was a return from six years of barely existing, of being off the football map. Wycombe, 1988, was an immediate return after being consigned to the bin. Aldershot 2011 was crushing, an admission of collapse, a day where the phones were more important than the football, because they brought our only hope as Barnet played Port Vale. Tomorrow, it’ll be both. If we do the job, then we’ll hope Stockport and Bolton don’t. Three matches, three needed outcomes, and one goal. Championship football.

If it doesn’t happen tomorrow, it’s not heartbreak. We’re not talking Fulham in 1982, a winner-takes-all showdown where you’re either elated or deflated, ecstatic, or broken and lost. If we don’t do it tomorrow, we have six other chances, each one more likely than the last. Tomorrow, we need three points and hope the two chasing teams don’t get those points. If that doesn’t happen, it’s like a National Lottery rollover, only each time it rolls over, you’re given one number for free.

If we don’t do it tomorrow, one of the two will likely drop out on Monday, leaving it as a two-horse race. A race we lead by 18 points. A race we lead by six wins. A race that we feel is almost won, but is so tantalisingly close we can taste it. It’s like watching your steak coming out at an expensive restaurant. It’s there, it looks like it’s coming your way, and it is so, so good. It’s just not on your table yet, and there is an outside chance it’s going to the people behind you.

Tomorrow, if promotion does arrive, a build-up of pressure is going to release like never before. It’s almost a lifetime of pressure, a lifetime of nearlys, not-quites and almosts, punctuated by long periods of nothingness. That’s Lincoln City, but that is football, isn’t it? You nail your colours to a mast and usually, once in a blue moon, you get a game like this. You get a game that matters, you sit on the cusp of history.

We just get it a lot right now. Macclesfield and Burnley (2017), Chelsea U21s and Exeter City (2018), Cheltenham and Tranmere (2019), Blackpool (2021) and Portsmouth (2023) have all been games with so much riding on them in the last ten years, games that mattered, games that had the potential to shape history. Those in bold were the best, because we knew failure to get what we wanted just rolled that joy over. The pressure built for a couple more days, a couple more weeks, but it was still right there.

On those days, each and every single one of them, I celebrated with my Dad. That isn’t the case this year, as people know, and that will be hard. I was lucky, though. I had those moments, and more, and that plays into this whole article. Those were shared moments nobody could describe, nobody could steal or impose upon. When Dad passed, everyone would say how lucky I was because we’d had the football, and I knew they were right.

Nobody knows how lucky I was when you lived games like tomorrow could be, shared those moments. Nobody other than other football fans, like you.

Tomorrow is another payoff. Tomorrow is one of those days we live for. Tomorrow could be history, or it could be a small step in history. Either way, tomorrow is to be enjoyed and cherished. Whatever happens, we’re on the cusp of something huge, watching a team rewriting history, and this time the sequel is going to be bigger than anything modern-day Lincoln City have ever achieved.

Together, that’s our achievement. Lincoln City is us, and we are Lincoln City, so cherish every moment together. Whoever you go with, make sure this memory is one that lasts.

Up the Imps